Seasonal flu: Examining school-based vaccination; Debating health-care worker mandates

A few recent items related to seasonal influenza vaccination:

-- Lisa Schnirring at CIDRAP News published an interesting story last week examining the potential use of school-based flu vaccination efforts in order to increase coverage in the under-18 population for whom vaccination is now recommended by the ACIP. Optimism for these in-school vaccination programs seems to be in short supply given the various pressures -- funding, staffing, and performance -- faced by school districts around the country.

-- Each flu season, the amount of attention grows regarding the astonishingly-low influenza vaccination rates among health-care workers grows. Two recent papers join the discussion about the use of mandates to boost coverage in this group:

• "Requiring Influenza Vaccination for Health Care Workers" (American Journal of Public Health, online pre-publication -- subscription required); Reviews the ethical arguments for and against mandating vaccination, concluding that a program providing small incentives for compliance and requiring active refusal is ethically superior to mandated vaccination.
  

• "The Ethics of Mandatory Vaccination against Influenza for Health Care Workers" (Vaccine, Vol. 26, No. 44, 5562-5566 -- subscription required); Focuses primarily on the ethics of mandatory vaccination for those working in long-term care facilities, and concludes that mandates are only justifiable if voluntary programs fail to achieve 50% coverage among health-care workers.